Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
Albert Einstein
It is an empirically-proven fact that most people believe what their parents/local culture believe with respect to politics, religion and philosophy in general.
Like it or not, we are largely the products of our genetics and upbringing, the former of which is determined by blind chemical processes, the latter by chance -- no one chooses their parents or culture.
I spoke with an old friend yesterday, a very intelligent man -- did his chemistry postdoc at Harvard -- who told me that believing in God helps him be a better person, and to believe in things that he otherwise would have a hard time believing in. He told me that it really didn't matter to him whether it was true if God existed or not; he used religion as a way to enhance his life and outlook. Given the above quotes and facts of the matter regarding who we are and what we believe, I can see his point. That's why I'm not an evangelical atheist.
My problem is that I can't make myself believe in something that I find lacking evidence, or something contradicted by evidence. And that's why I'm an atheist with respect to the Western concepts of God and agnostic with respect to some Eastern and philosophical concepts of a god (nexus of causality, grounding of existence, etc.).
...while we may be dust in the wind, we're stardust, at least. Moby sang that we're all made of stars. All of us. That comforts me a bit.
This resonates with me today. I don't know why, but maybe you will.
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Technorati tags: God, Religion, Politics, Philosophy
